


dear time traveler,

by anima



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Doomed Timelines, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-14
Updated: 2013-03-14
Packaged: 2017-12-05 08:01:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,440
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/720714
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anima/pseuds/anima
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>she wasn’t as hard to find as he’d thought—just a quick walk down doomsday drive, keep right on the once-stable loops he’d fucked to hell and back, skip past the clouds full of technicolor blood and whirlwinds of gray faces and down the rabbit hole he went.</p>
            </blockquote>





	dear time traveler,

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired in part by [this.](http://pfennings.tumblr.com/post/36639796382/how-it-began)

I.

she meets him for the first time on a daring adventure.

grass stains splotched against the beige canvas of her khaki pants, she hobbles through the brush on legs still unaccustomed to the fine art of sprinting, her laughter bubbling past her lips like her grandfather’s aged champagne. she calls for her trusty steed and a mountain of white fur appears, stiff and mechanical like the toy imitations she’d never known. her last imaginary foe vanquished, she searches with carefully trained gusto for a new adversary. bec rises to the challenge and shuffles off, the big bad dog stalking little green riding jade.

even at an age she can count on her fingers she knows the jungle floor better than a mother’s touch, all thick vines and wet moss and leaves that mutter like disgruntled passerby as she wanders along. her attention starts to wane with the dimming sunlight overhead when she feels a nip at her shoulder. naive excitement springs through her like a coil and she leaps around, her four front teeth as lopsided as the ground under her feet. but my oh my, what human hands this wolf has!

“you’re not bec!! and you’re not granpa, either!!” her new friend looks like the  _real_ little red, a crimson hood casting a shadow darker than the thick trees overhead. the heavy fabric that rolls from his shoulders down to hers rustles with mirth, and her eyes widen with surprise. 

“astute little squirt, aren’t you.” 

“i’m not little! granpa says i’m big enough to take down all the monsters on this island!” she wishes this princess-hero-man would show his face; he’s already so tall she has to jump just to catch a glimpse in the fading light. the cape shakes again; how can anyone laugh so quietly? grandpa sure can’t; his guffaws roar through her belly like the thunder that keeps her up at night, but she’s never scared when grandpa’s laughing. 

“already killing monsters, huh?”

“course I am!” she puffs out her chest like a haughty ruler in her court. “I’m a harley, after all! harleys always fight monsters, and harleys always win!”

he stands in silence. she dances around his feet, unperturbed. 

“where’s your basket?”

“…what?”

“you’re dressed like little red riding hood, but you don’t have anything to give your gramma.” she hears him laugh this time, and it’s a light little bark like bec right before he squishes a frog. 

“little red riding hood? screw that, I’m no pansy little girl. I’m a knight.” she gasps in wonder.

“a  _knight_?”

“yep.” it all makes sense now, though. the funny outfit, the stiffness in his shoulders, the mysterious shadow across his face. she had wandered into her own imagination and found herself a bonafide, real deal hero.

“will you take off your hood?”

“if you say the magic word.”

“kalamazooie!” her eyes dart around to make sure grandpa’s nowhere to be found; she doesn’t know what that word means, but he only says it when something bad happens, and she doesn’t want to jinx him.

“I was shooting for please, but close enough.” knobbly fingers brush across his head and she sees hair white as becs and eyes still too dark to see. well, they’re not eyes, exactly. they’re glasses like grandpa wears, but they’re blacked out. how does he see through all that darkness?

she stares with all her might at this strange man with a voice like the surface of a placid lake. he’s a lot older than her, but nowhere near as old as grandpa. maybe he’s around bec’s age. he’s kind of like bec, and not just because of the hair; he has the same thin mouth, the scrunched shoulders like he’s waiting to pounce at anything that comes your way. he seems tired too, the way bec’s getting tired all the time. grandpa says it’s because he’s seen too many adventures with him, and he’s not technically a harley so he’s not quite as high-falutin’ as the two of them. 

“if you’re a knight, then you go on adventures too, right?” he’s so much bigger than her but his smile is small, is her-sized. she wants to pluck it off his face and see if it would fit hers, if only she could reach.

“i went on one. a long time ago. a really big adventure. the biggest adventure ever.” she tries to imagine the immensity of his adventure, and her little mind that only knows the skirts of the jungle and the edge of the sea can’t begin to fathom it. he really is a hero, this big red hooded man. 

“will you take me!?!” her voice spirals up in excitement as she grabs two fistfuls of his funny pants. he doesn’t pick her up and spin her around like grandpa does, but he does smile a him-sized smile. 

“don’t worry, harley. if there’s one thing you’re getting it’s a boatload of adventure.”

“really!?!!?!”

 “I’ll take you on ‘em myself. you just gotta do one thing, okay?” she nods so fast she gets dizzy. “ok, lemme see your hand.” she offers her fingertips like a queen to her subject, and her knight slips to his knees as he fishes through his pockets. her royal highness is nigh squealing with anticipation. 

“see this?” he stretches something between his fingers, and the something is a little piece of red yarn. she’s a little disappointed after sudden fantasies of scepters and tiaras. “this is a special reminder. if you put it somewhere funny, you’ll always notice it and remember why you put it there. smart, right?”

“that’s really smart!!” that’s the smartest thing she’s ever heard!

“so, whenever you see this in its funny little place,” he’s talking slow, like grandpa when he tells her where she’s not allowed to go, “you’re gonna remember to do something. and it’s gonna be real easy to forget, cause you’re you and there’s a lot going on, but you’ve gotta remember to do this, no matter what.” 

“do what??” up-close she can see a little dent in his cheek when he smiles like a big kid and not like her. she reaches out to touch it but it’s already gone…

“whoah now. I’m trying to build it up here.” he twines the yarn around her index finger and she lights up again, because it’s a ring now, and a ring’s jewelry just like her pretend-tiara, and she’s getting it from a tall brave knight who went on the biggest adventure  _ever,_ and this is so much better than hide-and-seek with bec. 

“whenever you see this little red string, I want you to remember to get on something called pesterchum and talk to dave, okay?” she holds out her palm and examines her new accessory with manic excitement. she’s a queen and an adventurer and a girl with a mission, just like grandpa. 

“who’s dave?” 

“you’ll find out.” they both look up when her name rings through the evening air, and a distant rhythm of a four-legged sprint tells her she’s gone past her curfew. 

“oh no, granpa’s gonna be—”

but the knight in red disappeared. she looks left and right, squints through her glasses til she can barely see a thing, but he’s really good and gone. bec appears in an instant, all chiding teeth and lost breath, and she follows him back with adventure on her mind and eyes over her shoulder.

“good-bye, mister hero!” 

 

II. 

she wasn’t as hard to find as he’d thought—just a quick walk down doomsday drive, keep right on the once-stable loops he’d fucked to hell and back, skip past the clouds full of technicolor blood and whirlwinds of gray faces and down the rabbit hole he went.

she was alice in her own wonderland, stumbling through a towering landscape with a stomach full of a notch in her very straight timeline that left her three times too small for her big adult shoes. it was different, watching her tick up and down her tower like a well-oiled cog in a grandfather clock, following her grandfather like the dog that followed her as she learned how to shoot before she could read.

the island was a prison to its keepers but a freedom to its guest, a freedom of simple causality without the dissonant chime of a thousand broken clocks ticking over his head. looking to the left did not doom looking to the right; a bullet in the sky would not lodge itself in another self’s heart. he had spent his life with fingers bound tight and a fate he couldn’t control pulling the strings; only atropos’ shears managed to cut him free.

he stays away as much as he can—the venom of the butterfly effect still lies cold and ruthless in his long-frozen veins—but sometimes a little red string pulls taut against his heart and he succumbs to half-assed excuses; it won’t hurt; she won’t remember; it might save her one day.

“you ever tried shooting blind-folded?” she’s still got the look of a child but there’s a new hunger in her eyes, an insatiable desire to taste every fruit of knowledge she can grasp in her slender little hands.

“why would I ever want to try that? it sounds dangerous!” she’s throwing off energy like uranium, tightening screws as she talks, pulling at the tangled yarn on her fingers as she looks up at this funny looking man dressed in nothing but red.

“what kind of a sharpshooter would you be if you couldn’t?” flip goes the switch, on goes the eager fire in her eyes.

“I’m the best sharpshooter in the whole world after grandpa, ‘course I could do it!” she’s gone before her rifle hits the grass under her feet, sprinting up flight after flight of narrow steps. she’s back before he has time to laugh, a light piece of cloth pulling up at the sky in the oceanic breeze. he looks at her face and all he can see is a long line of lime green exclamation points.

“easy there, pick something to shoot before you start tossing bullets all over the place.”

she props her foot on his crossed knee and cups her hands into the world’s most effective telescope, staring down at her kingdom with a comic intensity.

“how about that lily pad, way down by the frog temple?”

“if you think you can hit it.” she growls, bec’s prodigy through and through.

“lemme load my rifle, then you can tie the blindfold.” she moves with the swift precision of a thousand repetitions under a critical eye, her lips mouthing the hearty _good, love_ s and _no, not quite, dear_ s she’s heard over her shoulder since before she could walk. it’s like clockwork, the way she undoes solid metal and pieces it back together before she can let out her own pulled breath. “ready!”

he can’t deny that it unnerves him, to touch her. he shouldn’t exist, shouldn’t be able to enjoy the temperate afternoon sun in a world that was never his. the simple grandeur of her life is slowly infecting him, but he cannot shake the fear of his impending, grandiose death reaching her.

he pulls the cloth as gently as he can over her eyes, only letting his wrists brush against her wiry tangle of black hair as he knots the fabric against her skull.

“that good?" 

“yep!” she springs to her feet without the slightest apprehension, her rifle on her shoulder like there’s nothing on her eyes at all.

“you even know what direction you’re shooting?”

“I always know that, silly. I’m a harley!” she takes her time, letting the wind pull at her bare arms, tasting the course of the air before she sets her aim. there is no hesitation in her grip; she holds the weapon with the precision of a trained huntsman, not of a child with a dangerous toy.

another routine falls into place, and he can see her grandfather standing over her head, coaching her with a strange intensity that lies outside his characteristic bravado. _pull off the safety just like that, tighten on the trigger, eye right in the crosshair—don’t want to miss after all this trouble, right-o? now breathe, love, breathe in the same air your bullet’s going to breathe, wait til you feel good and ready, and slowly pull…_

like a crack of thunder through the clear summer skies she looses her shot, her thin shoulders barely sufficient to bear the recoil of a weapon as large as she is. she whips off her blindfold and throws herself forward as far as she can, squinting through thick lenses at the distant water.

“did I hit it!? did I hit it!?”

she hurls her eyes back at him, and he’s smiling a little smile, and that’s the only confirmation she needs. her joy rolls off of her like heat from a supernova, and she’s running circles around him and whooping and laughing, and even at nine years old she’s the second-best sharpshooter this side of the pacific, gosh darn it!

“what’dya think of _that,_ mister knight!?” he laughs with just one side of his cheek, but she knows that's a boon from her stoic hero.

“you really are starting out with more sense than me.”

 

III.

it’s only at night that the island shows its true colors, nothing but harsh whites and muddied grays under a rearing thunderhead. the once crystal blue water fades into a stony wall along the edges of the shore; an ancient statue hangs overhead like a looming obelisk; the little queen’s ivory tower becomes a stark prison.

icy rain seeps into his shoulders, trying in vain to pull the offending red hue straight from his clothes. he pulls himself as tight as he can until he escapes the taunting prick of water and instead takes council with a hundred glass eyes, mounted on walls, posted on the sterile white floor, rearing over his head in a snarl frozen stiff with time and decay. he was a frightening kind of man, that girl’s grandfather.

a lunar spotlight catches him through open windows as he makes his way up, up, up, his shadow dancing with twisted malice at his feet. not even the light clack of canine claws on tile echo the hollow sound of his steps; the only sign of life is the walk of the dead. how ironic.

he finds jade’s heaving beast of a guardian standing watch at her door, its curled teeth seeming even more sinister in the dim moonlight. he moves aside with reluctance, acknowleding his master’s guest with nothing more than a leering neon stare.

“ _who’s there!?_ ” her eyes are wilder than bec’s, clawing in the darkness down the barrel of her gun. he flips the light, and she flinches; even across the room, he can see heavy shadows under her eyes. “oh. you scared me.”

 “god harley, you look like death.”

“‘course I do. I haven’t slept in days.” this is confusing. this is a foreign iteration of the girl he knew, a piece of her timeline he’d always brushed aside.

“why the hell not?” she looks so small, wrapped up in all her blankets with that big hunting gun in her hands.

“I can’t.” she turns away, mumbles it defiantly into her shoulder.

“and why the hell is that?” thunder roars through the walls, and she jumps like lightning, and just like that he understands.

“your gramps, right?”

her eyes look so heavy on her face.

“you’re a hero, right? can you…bring him back?”  her words lodge themselves in his chest, tear their way straight through his heart. this isn’t what he wanted. this isn’t alice in wonderland.

“sorry kid, dead means dead.” he’d met versions of himself who’d tried to prove him wrong, parts of him who threw away everything they had for the chance to haunt the parts of his life he missed most. he wasn’t doing anything different, in the end. they were all a bunch of worthless hypocrites, those damned doomed daves. 

he realizes he’s failed then, the way her face crumples and falls low against her chest. he made a mistake, letting her throw all her chips in for a lousy counterfeit.

“I broke a promise,” she says, and he wants to pull open the door and leave because a sinner like him has no place on this side of the confessional, “I promised grandpa I’d never cry, but when I found him that night…”   

“everybody cries, jade. you’re a person, not a robot.”

“even you?” she sounds so doubtful. he almost wants to laugh at this poor girl who can’t tell the difference between armor and tinfoil.

“even me. you know I met a ghost once?” she’s so predictable, the way she perks up at him with those big glass eyes.

“like a real ghost?”

“yep, just a regular everyday dead guy. he wasn’t even scary or anything.”

“did you talk to him?” the gun’s tossed aside on her bed, and she’s leaning into his face like she’s looking for treasure between his eyes.

“yeah. I asked what dying was like.”

“what’d he say?”

“pretty boring. a real let-down. you get the dumb life-before-your-eyes yadda-yadda and then poof, you’re a ghost. nothing special, no dramatics.”

“you think grandpa’s a ghost now too?” she’s bigger now but her voice is the same, twirling up as she asks where his basket is. 

“I’d take a gander and say your gramps could definitely be ghost-tier.”

“do you think I’ll get to meet him like you did!?” he remembers the hollow look in his doomed self’s eyes, the muddy splatter of red across his white shirt that pulled at his eyes and refused to let go as he muttered a breathy _sup_ and hopes to god, a real god, that she never does.    

“maybe. here’s the thing, though; you can only see ghosts if you’re dreaming, and you can only dream if you’re asleep.”

“so if I go to sleep, I might see my grandpa again?”

“that’s the gist of it, squirt.”

“okay.” she looks at him with heavy eyes and steels her shoulders, her lips set in determination. “you'll be keeping watch while I'm asleep, right?”

a smile pulls at sir knight’s mouth as he sets himself at the edge of her bed, a second guard for a lonely little queen.

“you got it, harley.”

 

IV.

_dave, something’s coming._

it sounds so calm, so mundane on onyx lips as a low rumble careens through paradox space. this is not a storm during monsoon season. this is not something they will survive.

_not yet._

he has faced this a thousand times and will face it a thousand more, and yet he still keeps running; a wild hope takes root in him like a plague and drives him mad in an instant. there is still time, there is still a way out. just one missed loop, one lost strand of the timeline that would save him and doom all the rest. it’s selfish, how badly he wants to destroy the version of him that had the sense to know better.

_get ready, dave._

time is finally running short; he feels its weight on his shoulders, pushing down like a thousand tons on his back as cause and effect burst and collapse and split at the seams. the universe itself is falling apart at their feet, and there is no escape. the technicolor clouds are still; all eyes, red, blue, violet, black, all are on the western skies.

_it's too soon._

he passes versions of himself and versions of people he’s saved and versions of people he’s killed, and none pay attention to his desperate chase with oblivion. the sky is burning red as blood; a feral roar tears at their souls.

_this is the end, dave._

the face is cracked like the glass surface of an antique clock but there it remains, there it stands in his reach. he throws out a hand and hangs on the edge of his rabbit hole, and he feels death at his toes, real death this time, ice-cold and permanent. this is no distracting transition. this is truly the end.

_I need to be sure..._

he feels fire at his feet and an ocean breeze against his cheeks as he grants himself one last glimpse of the girl on the island, a thousand times brighter than anything he’s ever known. he manages a real smile, a him-sized smile, before the world fades to white.

\-- gardenGnostic [GG] began pestering turntechGodhead [TG] at 18:36 -- 

GG: hi dave!!


End file.
